Familiar Arabist Line

July 29, 1985

CHARLES FERRELL'S My Word column of July 11 poses an excellent question: Can peace ever come to the Holy Land? From that point on he digresses along the all too familiar Arabist line of blaming Israel for all the ills of the region.

Ferrell states that hatreds and emotions are at a fever pitch in the aftermath of Israel's invasion of Lebanon. What he fails to point out is that before the invasion and the subsequent destruction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO with the help of Syria had fomented a civil war in Lebanon that killed 100,000 Christians and Moslems. He fails to point out that after the civil war the PLO terrorized the population of Lebanon. This is the root cause of the hatred that exists in Lebanon today. This is why Shiite Moslems were killing 300 Palestinians a week in the Sabra and Chatilla camps. They want to prevent the PLO from regaining its hold on Lebanon.

We can argue the pros and cons of the Arab-Israeli conflict until we are blue in the face. If Ferrell wants to see peace in the region, he should use his good offices as past president of the Syrian-Lebanese-American Club of Orlando to resolve the myriad of conflicts and hatreds that always have existed between the totalitarian Arab states of the region, including the different factions they control. One merely has to focus on any of a dozen conflicts in the region such as Iran vs. Iraq, Libya vs. Chad or Syria vs. the Syrian people of Hama to see that there is more to the problem

If the Arab governments cannot respect the rights of fellow Arabs to exist in peace, how can Ferrell expect Israel to believe his thesis that they have accepted Israel's right to exist?

Egypt was the only Arab government to give peace a chance. It was ostracized for its efforts. It's time for others to follow Egypt's lead.